Perth Glory midfielder Adriano Pellegrino is determined to avoid the second-year blues as he gears up for the new Hyundai A-League season.
Despite becoming Perth’s Most Glorious Player for an impressive first year in the midfield, Pellegrino wants to have a more consistent impact on matches this time around.
Speaking after the club’s first full week of training for the new campaign, the 24-year-old said there were similarities between now and when he was given a new contract at the Glory midway through 2008-09.
In both cases, Pellegrino said there was a risk of resting on one’s laurels and taking a step backwards.
But he said he wouldn’t let that happen, saying his determination to keep getting better can be seen from several big performances in the second half of last season, where he celebrated the new contract with a stunning 30-metre goal against Melbourne.
“I just signed my new contract a couple of weeks prior to that and a lot of people said ‘now you’ve signed your contract you’re going to get lethargic and really just tone it down and not care’,” Pellegrino said.
“But it really stepped me up and the second half to the year was much better than the first.”
“Winning the MGP last year was a big, big honour for me, especially seeing the names that had won it before. I was just basically very honoured to play at the club and get my chance.”
“But you never take anything for granted, you just always push and push and even though, on a personal level, I played every game last year, you just want to come out and always improve and get more assists and score more goals.”
“You’ve always got players pushing for positions and I’m not going into this season thinking I’m playing or anything like that (for) there’s always challenges ahead.”
Pellegrino said his form somewhat mirrored the team’s last season, in that he had an uncertain start to the campaign before growing in confidence as the year progressed.
The midfielder said the Glory’s failure to make the top four by just six points could be attributed to the club’s poor start to the season, where it won just one of the first seven matches.
But he said the entire team was determined to ensure this didn’t happen again.
“I think everyone’s got the right focus knowing we’ve got to get off to a good start to the year,” Pellegrino said.
“You can also see it in our eyes at training, everyone’s switched on and the core of the team from last season is still here, with the new boys coming up and the new boys are always pushing us to work harder.”
“It’s not going to help with the fixture showing we’ve got two away games to start with, but all the boys are positive and we know if we can get off to a good start to the year, we can definitely push for the finals.”
“(And) on a personal level, I didn’t have that good of a start to last year, so my aim is to get a better start and to be consistent over a whole season, not just in patches,” he said.
